Inspired by Herman Melville during a long journey to Sagittarius A.
Issuing forth from their ant-hills in the sky,
they overrun and conquer the dark expanse
like so many Alexanders,
parceling out among them
the Fallows, Silentium, and Gallipolis.
The sky is theirs, they own it,
as Emperors own empires.
The merchantman’s freighters
be but busy highways and railroads.
The bountyman’s Fer-de-Lance,
but floating forts and frontier outposts.
Even the pirate’s Viper
plundering ships like petty kingdoms
like Baden before Napoleon.
He, the Commander,
alone resides and riots in the Vast.
He alone hurdles into it in thin metal ships,
to and fro plowing it as his own plantation.
There is his home, there lies his business.
He lives within the dark expanses,
like a whale in the sea.
He hides among the asteroids
and climbs unknown peaks.
For years he has not known land
so that when he comes to it at last
it smells like another world,
more strangely than the moon to an Earthsman.
Like the landless gull that at sunset folds her wings
and is rocked to sleep between billows,
so too at nightfall the Commander,
beyond the sight of land, love, and king
spools down his engine, and lays him to his rest,
while under his very pillow rush comets and planets.
Issuing forth from their ant-hills in the sky,
they overrun and conquer the dark expanse
like so many Alexanders,
parceling out among them
the Fallows, Silentium, and Gallipolis.
The sky is theirs, they own it,
as Emperors own empires.
The merchantman’s freighters
be but busy highways and railroads.
The bountyman’s Fer-de-Lance,
but floating forts and frontier outposts.
Even the pirate’s Viper
plundering ships like petty kingdoms
like Baden before Napoleon.
He, the Commander,
alone resides and riots in the Vast.
He alone hurdles into it in thin metal ships,
to and fro plowing it as his own plantation.
There is his home, there lies his business.
He lives within the dark expanses,
like a whale in the sea.
He hides among the asteroids
and climbs unknown peaks.
For years he has not known land
so that when he comes to it at last
it smells like another world,
more strangely than the moon to an Earthsman.
Like the landless gull that at sunset folds her wings
and is rocked to sleep between billows,
so too at nightfall the Commander,
beyond the sight of land, love, and king
spools down his engine, and lays him to his rest,
while under his very pillow rush comets and planets.